Occupational health and safety regulations impose a number of obligations on employers and, by the way, also on employees. One of them is the use of legally provided protection measures, which are divided into personal protective equipment as well as collective protection measures.

Unlike personal measures, collective protection measures are used in such a way that a group of workers uses them at the same time. Their main task is to prevent the impact of negative and dangerous factors that may occur in the work environment. Collective protection measures are a very broad category, which, in addition to technical solutions, also includes the organization of work and internal regulations and standards in force in the workplace.

Every employer is obliged to apply all possible collective protection measures to reduce the risks to the minimum levels that are acceptable in a given case. In the light of health and safety regulations, the use of collective protection measures takes precedence over personal protective equipment.

The division of collective protection measures covers two categories. The first are administrative and organizational measures. These include all legal acts defining health and safety rules, as well as internal regulations in force at the plant. This group of collective protection measures also includes the employer’s obligations in the form of control activities aimed at verifying whether health and safety regulations are enforced in the workplace.

The other collective protection measures are technical measures. They are a very broad category that includes all solutions that physically protect employees and reduce their occupational risks. The technical means of collective protection applied in a given workplace depend to a large extent on its characteristics, the industry in which it operates, the workplaces present and any local conditions.

Regardless of the industry, some technical means of collective protection can be found in virtually every workplace, because in individual buildings there is a group of very similar threats. Examples of collective protection measures in workplaces include:

• Safe lighting – the category includes general, local and complex lighting, which is a combination of the first two types. Health and safety regulations stipulate that there should be free access to daylight in a workplace building and, if it is insufficient, it should be supplemented with artificial lighting. It is also allowed to illuminate some rooms only with artificial light sources, but in specific conditions, for example in underground facilities. Behind the legal regulations in this area is the assumption that inappropriate light conditions can negatively affect the health of employees, primarily eyesight.
• Proper ventilation – its task is to maintain optimal cleanliness and air temperature in the rooms. Ventilation can be natural or mechanical.
• Air conditioning – employers are obliged to create comfortable conditions for employees inside the premises of the workplace. In this case, of course, it is about thermal comfort.
• Smoke extraction of the building – this collective protection measure concerns the fire hazard. The regulations clearly specify in which rooms and zones of the building the installation responsible for its smoke extraction must be located.
• Machine design solutions – this category includes collective protection measures that reduce the risk associated with the use of hazardous machinery in the workplace. Examples of such measures include barriers that hinder access to these devices by unauthorized persons or other means of access control.

Source: https://www.seka.pl/srodki-ochrony-zbiorowej/

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